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Already famous throughout Europe, this international bestseller plumbs recently opened archives in the former Soviet bloc to reveal the actual, practical accomplishments of Communism around the world: terror, torture, famine, mass deportations, and massacres. Astonishing in the sheer detail it amasses, the book is the first comprehensive attempt to catalogue and analyze the crimes of Communism over seventy years. "Revolutions, like trees, must be judged by their fruit," Ignazio Silone wrote, and this is the standard the authors apply to the Communist experience-in the China of "the Great Helmsman," Kim Il Sung's Korea, Vietnam under "Uncle Ho" and Cuba under Castro, Ethiopia under Mengistu, Angola under Neto, and Afghanistan under Najibullah. The authors, all distinguished scholars based in Europe, document Communist crimes against humanity, but also crimes against national and universal culture, from Stalin's destruction of hundreds of churches in Moscow to Ceausescu's leveling of the historic heart of Bucharest to the widescale devastation visited on Chinese culture by Mao's Red Guards. As the death toll mounts-as many as 25 million in the former Soviet Union, 65 million in China, 1.7 million in Cambodia, and on and on-the authors systematically show how and why, wherever the millenarian ideology of Communism was established, it quickly led to crime, terror, and repression. An extraordinary accounting, this book amply documents the unparalleled position and significance of Communism in the hierarchy of violence that is the history of the twentieth century.

User Reviews about The Black Book of Communism: Crimes - Terror - Repression

Day in day out, we are bombarded by the so called Holocaust.
Why do we never hear a word about the millions killed by communism?
Is it perhaps, because communism's leaders were all mostly of the same tribe as those "holocausted"?

Why these double standards by the media?
Is it perhaps, because the media is in the hands of these same chosen tribe?
Perhaps, perhaps...

Take it easy on me, my stepfather and half of my family are jewish, communism is the greatest evil that has occurred. From the 1870 to 1990 communist killed more than 100 million people in the world. Dialectics and their belief of evolution gave them the perfect example to kill humans, humans where nothing more than animals to communist. When religion and morality is gone there is no fear of any action we take. There is no supreme being to judge us. This was the real Dark Age of the world -- The Greatest Evil: Communism

Excellent reference book on Communism. Taken from the files of the archives in Moscow after the fall of the USSR in 1989, scholars and researchers mined the documents and materials of the Soviet secret services, and other subordinate agencies, to put together a sad and horrific account of a Communist socialist's society's repressive and often deadly abuse of it's millions of people, recorded by the architects and bureaucrats of the society itself. If you ever thought about what it would be like to be a socialist or communist, I would strongly encourage you to read this book. -- THE BLACK BOOK OF COMMUNISM

First off communism has never been tried yet so none of the so-called communism countries were communist countries no matter what they said. Even Karl Marx--whose theories they followed religiously(sorry for using that word)--was not really a communists. It was all a terrible coincidence that whenever these so-called communists seized power that people started dying in the millions. It was really the work of nazi spies and kulaks and wall street bankers who secretly killed these people. Lenin, Stalin, Che and Mao were so surprised when they found out!! Also you cannot have communism until the entire planet is communist so therefore these were not communist countries but nation states so all those corpses have nothing to do with communism. When communism finally conquers the world THEN you will see what communism is really like. There will be none of these stinking memoirs by these so-called survivors let me tell you. True communism is far more effecient. There will be no survivors at all. Everyone will be equal in their community property mass graves.

Also the idea that Communism killed more than six million people(100 million? HA!! I know for a fact that it was only 99.3. More fascist lies!!) and thus was worse than the Holocaust is pernicious. Some historians---I am at cell meeting with them right now---say that actually the body count was only 5.3 million so therefore it is okay. And do not worry--now that Putin has closed down the archives, we will get the numbers down to pre-1991 figures like say....oh 50,000 who were accidentally murdered by unamed lower functionaries who committed "excesses."

Ah yes I cannot wait. Soon we will rise up again and THIS time we will get it right. THIS time communism will be fully implemented and everyone will die who does not belong to the Party. Everyone.

Do not buy this book. -- I do not understand

Why Not In Paperback? Hmmmmm, there are sinister forces at work to suppress certain ideas from the masses. Beware. -- Why Not In Paperback?

This is the first review I write for Amazon. Coming from an Ex-Communist country (Romania) I ordered the book with a great deal of anticipation. My review "applies" only to Parts I, II and III, Courtois' introduction and final arguments in the book. I don't know that much about Communism outside Europe so I'll just stick to these parts.
1. On the introduction and the final article by Courtois: it is shallow, silly and offending/indecent (for the comparison with the Holocaust and more). Because: 1. These were not scholarly pieces, looked more like settling scores 2. It WAS NOT the proper introduction/ending to such a book, especially since it is the first big effort to finally (!!!) address the overall human suffering toll of Communism. (Dead)Persecuted people do/did not wish to become the puppets in some Western Saga of ideological fights. Their blood and tears should not be used so people can mostly point fingers at "useful-idiotic Leftists" or "just-as-bad-blood-sucking capitalists". Please read this book from a "humanistic" point of view first: all these deaths (may they be 50-100 millions) and suffering deserve some respect. There will be plenty time for comparing and analyzing, preferably in a scholarly journal, peer-reviewed or at least in a separate book. For a book claiming to be the first to add-up Communist death victims, could they not abstain from making a partisan point from it?
2.On the whole the book is too quantitative for my taste. I felt the Part on Eastern Europe too short, general and not having the right priorities in mind. I guess 1 million deaths here didn't seem like much, but Communism was much more than that..
3. The book wants to concentrate on killed/persecuted groups. But the diversity of people persecuted/killed in Communism is missing/underplayed. What is shown: religious people; "bourgeois" enemies; workers; peasants. WHAT IS MISSING or is insufficiently addressed: 1. Jews. Romanian Jews were sold like furniture to Israel. The anti-Semites were happy there were no more Jews after that. 250.000 - 300.000 Romanian Jews sold abroad by a communist state who persecuted them if they stayed (and they had just survived both Romanian and German fascists). For a book so hooked on big numbers a serious discussion on this episode was fitted ( for more details: [...]); 2. Romanians of German origins, sold in a more limited but similar fashion; 3. gays (outlawed in Romania, horribly beaten, killed (?) and abused by the police); 4. disabled people and children (placed in "special hospitals" to die of hunger and neglect. Again some serious number-crunching would have fit here);5. Gypsies. More than one state had racist policies (like sterilizing Roma women); 5. Women dead and sick because of the 1966 "Decree 770" banning abortion in Romania. Thousands of women estimated dead, the horror of this law especially in the 80's for an impoverished nation (not by incompetence but by criminal management) with no contraception and "pregnancy-tests" using frogs (yes, frogs) . And did the authors even bother to add these dead women up even in a modest estimate to their numbers? Sure, these are not "significant" numbers in the perspective of 100 millions, but still...
4 These are mostly Romanian but not unique examples. Frankly some of these social groups were barely/if at all addressed in the book: so were their deaths counted or not?
I am no expert in numbers. This is why I don't know if this or that particular event led to 10 million or 15 million dead. But, again, I am seriously puzzled by some deaths I'm not sure WERE counted: like some people killed in police basements in Romania or women dead from the law banning abortion. Death certificates were such "relative" things back then so while gay people (or any other "deviants") may have been killed by the police their official death records could state anything like "hit by bicycle".. People in Eastern Europe didn't die only from executions and labor camps... this particular section I felt was mishandled.
5. While a "book of numbers" I am glad they took some space to recount some of the more "sinister" few details, those stories we don't really believe, stories we are tempted not to believe. The ones I was familiar with, like the Pitesti experiment were all true.
6. The authors went for "NUMBERS" they say. But if you want numbers, stick to numbers. At times in Part I and II on Russia (USSR) the authors went to great lengths to show different communist factions at work and relations between them, but this didn't much help the point of the book. It did show the book was meant for publication in France
7. Back to numbers: when dealing with communist "records" and communist death tolls, there will always be controversy since communist authorities were known not to keep truthful and correct numbers ...how they kept even the record on milk production was an endless source of popular jokes. What is clear to me is that communist official documents meant for public eyes are not to be trusted (this I guess is evident). So what we are left with is sometimes not enough to make comfortable estimates. I myself was not shocked by the numbers. We grew up knowing the Communists killed, that they killed many, and that they had great state institutions at their disposal to mask it/lie about it and immense idiocy in their brain to cause them to slip the truth sometimes/ unintentionally spoil records other times. I think social conditions in most these countries were such that it would be a great shock if Communism hadn't killed tens of millions of people. So numbers are too low, too big? It's too early to tell...many documents to be uncovered a lot of fog left to clear. I think a dry simple table at the end of each chapter summarizing the death total and how it was counted/estimated would have been useful. As I've said I'm not a big fan of this quantitative approach but couldn't they be more rigorous about it? Especially with shaky material (communist records) researchers should double their effort and make sure they cleared up as much as possible. Add 100 pages to the book, fill them with dry numbers and boring short explanations.

I wanted so badly to give this book 5 stars. I give it 4. Maybe it deserves 3 (Especially for that Part III) but I am biased! Consider 1 star for the tremendous effort and for opening I hope a new road for more detailed and encompassing research. In the end I am grateful for this book, for breaking a little bit of what appears to be an overall long and dreadful silence: because some won't ask, some won't tell, most want to forget.

PS Sorry if this was too long..,again, this is my first review and I already reached its 20th draft.
-- I give it 4 stars, I wished I could give it 5